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Last night, while Maduro was rambling on TV about how he and Russia will stabilize world oil prices, the El Valle river flooded. Before signing off from his weekly TV show, the disaster was brought to the President’s attention, and he went on to criticize the ultraderecha twitter commentators who blamed his administration for the flood. “Imbeciles” he…

Last night, Tarek el Aissami, ex-Minister of Justice and current Governor of Aragua, was in charge of reading part of the State of Emergency Decree which will rule over five municipalities of the Western Venezuela border state of Táchira. The decree which, according to El Aissami, reflects “the supreme importance that Central Government places on Human…

“Mommy, can we get some French fries?” asked my daughter as we drove past the massive granite monolith that is the McDonald’s store of La Castellana in Caracas. “There are no French fries in Venezuela, baby” sentenced my wife. My daughter’s eyes dampened like that was the saddest thing she ever heard. And perhaps it was.…

This shaky footage, clearly the work of a trembling hand, is good enough to make out the basics: In broad daylight, in an alley behind some buildings, three or four lifeless bodies lay scattered across the ground. An SUV arrives and several police officers get out of the car. One of them scouts the area,…

Caught the red eye to Barcelona. Barcelona, Anzoátegui, that is. Blood-shot eyes. Mosquitoes big as helicopters, and the wait. That absurd time-bending wait while an immigration officer chats on her phone, one kid cries, the other drools over your shoulder, and you are about to lose your connecting flight. As the immigation officer giggled, a…

Milagros Socorro broke Twitter yesterday with her reporting of a guajiro upheaval in the border town of Sinamaica. The Zuliana journo summarized the story in 26 tweets and then filled in the blanks with an article at Konzapata. Turns out a pissed wayuu crowd raided -as vikings do- the town hall of the Bolivarian Municipality of La…

On Tuesday the CNE – our very neutral elections authority – explained that the gender quota would not apply to the candidates elected in the primaries. Seems like someone in the government party did some number crunching. As Eugenio Martinez explains in Prodavinci, only 28 women from a total 113 districts were elected in the PSUV primaries. If the…